Joe Michael Straczynski
Joe Michael Straczynski is an award winning writer and producer who has worked in movies, television as well as writing novels and short stories and being a former journalist.
After finding major success with Babylon 5, and it's spin off show Crusade, his new project saw him pen the script for Clint Eastwood's Changeling, which starred Angelina Jolie. His screenplay went on to be Bafta nominated.
I caught up with him to talk about Changeling the research behind the project and what lies ahead for him.
Changeling is about to be released in the UK on DVD; can you tell me a bit about the film?
It’s the story of a mother whose son was abducted in 1928. When the police returned a boy to her six months later, it was not her son, but they refused to acknowledge this out of a fear of public embarrassment. This began a nightmare that led to the biggest murder investigation in LA history to that point.
How did you get involved in the Changeling project?
I’d heard about the story years ago from a source, and after trying to write it long ago without sufficient information to make it work, I took a year off from TV writing in 2003-2004 to do the research that led to the script.
Of course the film is based on a true story so what kind of research did you have to do before you started writing? What emotions did
you go through while you were doing this research?
There were and are no contemporary sources of information on this story, so all of my work was primary research: going to archives and old records departments in the LA County Courthouse, City Hall and elsewhere, just pouring over old documents one page at a time to try and piece the story together.
It was a very emotional experience as I began to fully understand what she endured in her struggle to find out the ultimate fate of her son. When I began the research, I knew only that she had been wrongly institutionalised in an asylum. It was only in digging further that I learned of the intersection with the Northcott murders.
How long was this research period and is that a normal amount of time that you would spent looking into a topic?
It was a lot longer than usual, about a year all in, which was essential due to the fine detail of work that had to be done. I’d literally go into City Hall in the morning, pull down files, and just turn pages all day looking for even one reference to the situation, since often they’re not very well indexed. Sometimes you’d spend days and find nothing, or just one tiny reference. Other days were a gold-mine.
How difficult was it telling Christine Collins' story knowing that you were not writing a piece of fiction?
It was mainly difficult because I didn’t want to screw it up! I wanted to honour what she had done, and keep her what she was: a strong, determined woman and mother fighting for the life of her son. I felt I had an obligation to her to keep the story as true as possible.
It's a very complex and amazing story about a woman's fight for justice. How far were the police willing to go to keep face? What were your thoughts on Christine Collins' story?
I thought she showed amazing courage, especially for a woman of that time. Not only were women in general given little respect, she had the additional onus of being a single mother at a time when such women were considered vaguely immoral.
Despite this, she fought and kept on fighting, and this one solitary woman brought down most of the government of Los Angeles. It’s an astonishing story of personal courage.
The film very much explores the disempowerment of women and corruption in the police, did you set out with certain themes that you wanted to focus on and explore?
They weren’t so many themes I was looking to explore as the truth of her situation. You can’t tell her story honestly without including those elements.
Walter's disappearance was linked to the Wineville Chicken Coup Murders how difficult was it to research this and how much did you want the film to focus on this part of the story?
The research was slightly easier because there was more material written about it at the time, due to its sensationalist nature. What I didn’t want to do was to tell the story from Northcott’s point of view.
I didn’t want it to become his story, or a story about him. I wanted to keep the focus of the story on Christine, so I made a deliberate effort to keep his side of things at arm’s length.
How does the writing process work for you?
I’m kind of weird in that I don’t start writing physically until I’ve finished writing it in my head. I can’t think of anything more awful than sitting at the keyboard not knowing what to write next.
I play the movie through my head, over and over, keeping each scene, each line, in mind...going one way, then the other, rabbit-trailing and trying different approaches, until one day it’s all just there, and I have to run to the keyboard to get it all down while it’s still white-hot. So the writing part is actually the quickest part; it’s all the brain work up until that moment that takes forever.
How does the filming process work after you complete the script? How big a say do you get in alterations and how difficult is it to let go of your work?
Having been a producer, and on a few occasions a director, I understand that you have to let go and allow the script to take on its own life through diverse hands. Happily, in this case, they shot the first draft, so there were no alterations.
What do you think of the final film?
I’m very, very pleased. It does what I wanted it to do, to honour her courage, and in that and the beauty of how it was filmed, I’m eminently pleased.
Away from Changeling how did you get into script writing I read that you were a former journalist is that correct?
Yes, prior to working in television I was a reporter for the LA Times, the LA Herald Examiner, TIME Inc, and other publications. I then started selling scripts to TV and ended up working on shows like Murder She Wrote, Twilight Zone, Babylon 5, and others. One thing just sort of led to the next.
You are best known for your work on Babylon 5 how did you find the transition into feature films?
Surprisingly painless. It’s been nothing but fun.
How does writing for a TV show and writing a feature film script differ, or are similar?
They’re not terribly different, in that you’re trying to tell a story about a person, and be true to that person’s sensibilities and history. If there’s any point of distinction, it’s that you have more time in film to get it right, as opposed to television, where you’re constantly running to stay ahead of production.
Finally what's next for you?
Writing Lensman for Ron Howard, Forbidden Planet for Joel Silver, adapting World War Z for Marc Forster and They Marched into Sunlight for Paul Greengrass. My rewrite of Ninja Assassin for the Wachowskis will be out this summer.
Changeling is out now on DVD
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw
Joe Michael Straczynski is an award winning writer and producer who has worked in movies, television as well as writing novels and short stories and being a former journalist.
After finding major success with Babylon 5, and it's spin off show Crusade, his new project saw him pen the script for Clint Eastwood's Changeling, which starred Angelina Jolie. His screenplay went on to be Bafta nominated.
I caught up with him to talk about Changeling the research behind the project and what lies ahead for him.
Changeling is about to be released in the UK on DVD; can you tell me a bit about the film?
It’s the story of a mother whose son was abducted in 1928. When the police returned a boy to her six months later, it was not her son, but they refused to acknowledge this out of a fear of public embarrassment. This began a nightmare that led to the biggest murder investigation in LA history to that point.
How did you get involved in the Changeling project?
I’d heard about the story years ago from a source, and after trying to write it long ago without sufficient information to make it work, I took a year off from TV writing in 2003-2004 to do the research that led to the script.
Of course the film is based on a true story so what kind of research did you have to do before you started writing? What emotions did
you go through while you were doing this research?
There were and are no contemporary sources of information on this story, so all of my work was primary research: going to archives and old records departments in the LA County Courthouse, City Hall and elsewhere, just pouring over old documents one page at a time to try and piece the story together.
It was a very emotional experience as I began to fully understand what she endured in her struggle to find out the ultimate fate of her son. When I began the research, I knew only that she had been wrongly institutionalised in an asylum. It was only in digging further that I learned of the intersection with the Northcott murders.
How long was this research period and is that a normal amount of time that you would spent looking into a topic?
It was a lot longer than usual, about a year all in, which was essential due to the fine detail of work that had to be done. I’d literally go into City Hall in the morning, pull down files, and just turn pages all day looking for even one reference to the situation, since often they’re not very well indexed. Sometimes you’d spend days and find nothing, or just one tiny reference. Other days were a gold-mine.
How difficult was it telling Christine Collins' story knowing that you were not writing a piece of fiction?
It was mainly difficult because I didn’t want to screw it up! I wanted to honour what she had done, and keep her what she was: a strong, determined woman and mother fighting for the life of her son. I felt I had an obligation to her to keep the story as true as possible.
It's a very complex and amazing story about a woman's fight for justice. How far were the police willing to go to keep face? What were your thoughts on Christine Collins' story?
I thought she showed amazing courage, especially for a woman of that time. Not only were women in general given little respect, she had the additional onus of being a single mother at a time when such women were considered vaguely immoral.
Despite this, she fought and kept on fighting, and this one solitary woman brought down most of the government of Los Angeles. It’s an astonishing story of personal courage.
The film very much explores the disempowerment of women and corruption in the police, did you set out with certain themes that you wanted to focus on and explore?
They weren’t so many themes I was looking to explore as the truth of her situation. You can’t tell her story honestly without including those elements.
Walter's disappearance was linked to the Wineville Chicken Coup Murders how difficult was it to research this and how much did you want the film to focus on this part of the story?
The research was slightly easier because there was more material written about it at the time, due to its sensationalist nature. What I didn’t want to do was to tell the story from Northcott’s point of view.
I didn’t want it to become his story, or a story about him. I wanted to keep the focus of the story on Christine, so I made a deliberate effort to keep his side of things at arm’s length.